Navigational devices are becoming increasingly commonplace in the modern world. For example, navigational devices can be used for navigating a vehicle such as a car, boat, or airplane or for use when walking through an unfamiliar location. In particular, as smartphones, tablets, or other computing devices become increasingly able to determine their own position in the world using GPS or other positioning systems, navigational devices are no longer limited to devices specifically designed with the sole-purpose of providing navigational instructions. Instead, navigational devices can include a large variety of computing devices that can run one or more applications to provide near instantaneous instructions for navigating from almost any location to any other location.
In particular, such applications often offer “turn-by-turn” navigational instruction, which provides navigation over a sequence of driving maneuvers. Such instruction can be overlaid on a map that depicts the user's surroundings. Further, an indicator can be provided on the map to show the relative position of the navigational device. Text may be provided that lists the distance to the next driving maneuver.
However, such display methods implemented by current navigational devices can fail to provide users with an intuitive, accurate sense of the scale of displayed map. For example, a user of a current navigational product may be presented a single, unchanging stylization of the map, despite the fact that such map is presented at varying scales. As another example, the user may be unable to mentally convert the textual distance information into a full comprehension of the physical distance or may be distracted by extraneous information.
Furthermore, recent research has shown that users of current navigational products travel longer distances, make more stops, and commit more direction errors than traditional paper map users. Thus, users of current navigational products are failing to comprehend the scale of the provided map or the immediacy of the provided navigational instruction.